Victorian Government and Premier: Indictable criminal offences investigation

You’ll be aware of our requests to WorkSafe Victoria for prosecutions to be brought against the Victorian government and several individuals over the Hotel Quarantine Program that resulted in alleged 801 deaths from Covid-19 last year. Our Campaign summary and key details are here.

We have had a major development that we can report to you.

Late last week (4 March) we received a letter from WorkSafe Victoria confirming again that WorkSafe is investigating breaches of work health and safety laws related to the Hotel Quarantine Program. This is significant. Here are the core facts.

The WorkSafe letter says:

I refer to your request for WorkSafe Victoria to bring prosecutions against various individuals and entities associated with the Covid-19 Hotel Quarantine Program.

Please be advised that Worksafe’s investigation is still ongoing…

This is the clearest confirmation from WorkSafe of an investigation. Further it confirms that the investigation is occurring because of our correspondence to WorkSafe last year. Our key letter of 29 September 2020 uses section 131 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. That Section requires WorkSafe to investigate alleged work safety breaches when requested.

In our letter of 29 September we identified 142 breaches of the work safety laws.

We named 20 individuals and 6 entities as requiring investigation.

This includes:

• The Victorian Premier and 3 Ministers;
• The Chief Health Officer and 15 other heads of departments/agencies;
• The State of Victoria and 4 departments/agencies;
• Victorian Trades Hall Council.

The full list of individuals and entities is in our correspondence of 29 Sept here.

The significance of the WorkSafe letter of 4 March is that it confirms that the named individuals and entities are being investigated for indictable criminal offences under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The processes and procedures that are required under the Act mean that WorkSafe:

• must complete its investigation in a timely manner;
• must investigate each of the 142 alleged breaches against each of the 20 individuals and 6 entities;
• must write to us informing us of their decision to prosecute or not on each of the 142 alleged breaches.

Where WorkSafe decides not to prosecute or it has not brought a prosecution by late June (nine months from the date of our September 2020 letter) the matter/s must be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions on our request.

And

• the Director of Public Prosecutions must consider the matter/s and advise WorkSafe whether a prosecution should be bought. We must receive a copy of this advice and if WorkSafe declines to follow the DPP’s advice, it must provide us with written advice for its decision.

For your easy reference here are the four key documents:

• Section 131
• Relevant indictable criminal offences under the Occupational Health and Safety Act
• Our letter to WorkSafe 29 September 2020
• WorkSafe letter to us 4 March 2021